“In that case,” said the simple men, “there is no necessity for so many studies, nor of such a variety of arguments; only tell us which is the religion that best answers the end which they all propose.”

Immediately, on this, every group, extolling its own morality above that of all others, there arose among the different sects a new and most violent dispute.

“It is we,” said the Mussulmans, “who possess the most excellent morals, who teach all the virtues useful to men and agreeable to God.  We profess justice, disinterestedness, resignation to providence, charity to our brethren, alms-giving, and devotion; we torment not the soul with superstitious fears; we live without alarm, and die without remorse.”

“How dare you speak of morals,” answered the Christian priests, “you, whose chief lived in licentiousness and preached impurity?  You, whose first precept is homicide and war?  For this we appeal to experience:  for these twelve hundred years your fanatical zeal has not ceased to spread commotion and carnage among the nations.  If Asia, so flourishing in former times, is now languishing in barbarity and depopulation, it is in your doctrine that we find the cause; in that doctrine, the enemy of all instruction, which sanctifies ignorance, which consecrates the most absolute despotism in the governors, imposes the most blind and passive obedience in the people, that has stupefied the faculties of man, and brutalized the nations.

“It is not so with our sublime and celestial morals; it was they which raised the world from its primitive barbarity, from the senseless and cruel superstitions of idolatry, from human sacrifices,* from the shameful orgies of pagan mysteries; they it was that purified manners, proscribed incest and adultery, polished savage nations, banished slavery, and introduced new and unknown virtues, charity for men, their equality in the sight of God, forgiveness and forgetfulness of injuries, the restraint of all the passions, the contempt of worldly greatness, a life completely spiritual and completely holy!”

* Read the cold declaration of Eusebius (Proep.  Evang. lib.  I, p. 11,), who pretends that, since the coming of Christ, there have been neither wars, nor tyrants, nor cannibals, nor sodomites, nor persons committing incest, nor savages destroying their parents, etc.  When we read these fathers of the church we are astonished at their insincerity or infatuation.

“We admire,” said the Mussulmans, “the ease with which you reconcile that evangelical meekness, of which you are so ostentatious, with the injuries and outrages with which you are constantly galling your neighbors.  When you criminate so severely the great man whom we revere, we might fairly retort on the conduct of him whom you adore; but we scorn such advantages, and confining ourselves to the real object in question, we maintain that the morals of your gospel have by no means that perfection which